


Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Stardeer



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Amethyst in the kindergarten, Character Study, Gen, Isolation, Kindergarten, Loneliness, Pearl and Rose appear only briefly, Sad, Self-Harm, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stardeer/pseuds/Stardeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She returns to the sitting rock and tries popping and smacking her lips again, then humming. But with each noise she makes the silence seems to get heavier, and the hollow feeling worse. It pulls at her chest in strange ways that she doesn’t understand and makes her skin ache. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s a sensation of something lacking. She wants to feel something on her skin, maybe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The rock has been smoothed by the many times she sat on it. Now she embraces it and presses her cheek against the flat surfaces. It’s the softest thing she knows, apart from herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between a Rock and a Hard Place

There is darkness and pressure. The weight of a mountain bearing down in an inky blackness that is absolute. It’s everything there is. A microcosmos caught in the tiny place carved out in the middle of nothing but rock. For an unknown amount of time, it stays like this, the darkness and the pressure being everything, the micro cosmos undisturbed. It is comforting, in a way.

 

After a while, and who could say how long it was, a breath is drawn.

 

It’s awash with information, rich with sense and meaning and nuance, and suddenly the micro cosmos expands. There is the smell of rock, solid and densely packed, there is the smell of sediment, of soil, of dust. There are the multitude of individual components that make up each smell, there is the way the components combine, and the way the smells combine to make something new that carries hints of its components while still being something new and unique. The universe is darkness, and pressure, and smell; these are the constants of life, the Way Things Are, and they stay that way for another while, an unknown amount of time that is nothing, that is eternity.

 

Something is happening and a vibration shakes through the rock.

Something makes contact.

There is texture.

 

The universe expands by another facet of meaning. Sliding over the rock, there is rough structure of its surface, the way it feels like one solid if rough plane at first, only to reveal itself as a multitude of small granules and infinitesimally tiny holes, barely even there at all. Like its smell, the texture of the rock is both one thing and many things, and these two facts form a constant. The universe can change and expand, but its basic laws stay the same, one thing can make many things and yet be one thing; many things can make a new thing and yet stay many things.

 

Now that it has expanded twice and with a basic underlying law added to it, the universe feels quite big. There are four things in it: the darkness, the pressure, the smell and the texture. There is the law that underlies these four things. The complexity of it is astounding and enough to occupy for some more unknown amounts of time. And then, as this is pondered, there is yet another revelation. First there were fewer things, now there are more. This insight brings with it the idea of a before and an after, of time, as well as the idea of more and less, of quantity.

 

It is almost too much to cope with. Almost.

 

The new ideas integrate themselves with the earlier understanding of the Way Things Are, and combine in interesting ways. There are smell and texture, and they can be one thing made of many things and many things making one thing, and yet be more than their components. How does that work? Where does the more come from? And if there was less before and there is more now, then what about after – now? Might there be more yet? Where would that more come from?

 

There is now a different kind of pressure, not physical and related to texture, but coming from within. There is no choice but to heed this pressure and it translates into several yet unknown sensations. A movement, mass pressing against mass, generating a scraping sound. Stillness. The movement resumes and the scraping sounds repeats. Just like that, the universe has come to be bigger yet again, two new things added to everything else there already was, coming from sources previously undiscovered. Where would that more come from? Apparently the answer to that question is: anywhere. Might there be more yet? Apparently the answer to that question is: yes. Much more, perhaps.

The movement and the scraping continue and for a while, one that is much shorter than the first couple of whiles, they become the new constant, the new Way Things Are. It is over almost as soon as it starts, much too quickly. 

 

The scraping noise becomes a small rumble and clatter, the pressure of mass against mass vanishes as the texture of rock is displaced by empty nothing. The darkness vanishes and is replaced by blinding light, brighter than bearable. The smell of sediment is overwhelmed by so many others, unknown ones. It is entirely too much, the light, the smells, the lack of pressure. The universe hasn’t just changed, it has ruptured, shattered into unknown and scary fragments.

 

The light is blotted out an instant later by a darkness much less absolute and encompassing. Every breath and movement stops. It is not enough to bring back what was before; the darkness is incomplete, the pressure not there and the well known comfort of rocky smell and texture has become emptiness with few textureless wisps ghosting over places where only scraping stone touched before. But it’s easier in this incomplete darkness to process the emptiness of lacking pressure, to cope with the new variety in smell and the new sounds of whistling and clanging. The light only returns once smell and sound and lack of pressure have lost their overwhelming quality, even though they remain unusual. 

 

With the light, more things come into focus. The world is split into brightness above and a hazy darkness below, though not the darkness of the first awakening. Thus, there comes an understanding that there is above and below. The pressure from within is back, directing a movement forwards, but this time, the movement doesn’t work as intended. The darkness below rushes forwards and with a hard clunking sound, the texture of rock is back, but only on one side, the side where the darkness below had come close. The two thoughts connect and just like that, the darkness is rock. The rock can be experienced without feeling it, without texture. 

 

The sense of sight is a revelation of its own.

 

From this vantage point, there are different qualities of it. Right in front, there are details, the many crags and specks of dust and the rough surface that could only be felt are all clearly visible and overwhelm with their sheer variety. Farther away, the rocks become indistinct and barely visible under the white fog that permeates the place, a larger mass that reaches into the new concept of above and juts out and recedes in an imitation of the smaller crags in the front. Some things look less like rock, slightly different in colour and strangely shaped, but they too look different when they are closer as opposed to further away. Near and far become concepts, detail and whole. 

 

So many new things in such a short amount of time.

 

That first darkness had been so eternally long in comparison, and new things took such a long while to come. There had been leisure in exploring what was already there, time enough to experience all the details and learn all the subtle differences. Now, the shock of the new had barely receded before the next surprise came along, equally interesting and important, equally worthy of attention and exploration. 

 

As much as things have changed so quickly, some things seem to remain. The rock is still rock, even if it can now be experienced in multiple ways. A thing can still be made of many things and yet be one thing, many things can still make one thing and yet stay many things. And there is still the subtle pressure from within, the one that is impossible to ignore and translates into directed movement. The rock - its texture and smell and the details revealed in close sight - recedes with the upwards movement. 

 

It is joined by something new yet again. 

 

It’s bright against the rock, a new colour so unlike anything else in this place it almost hurts, but in a different way than the light did. Two soft purples clash with the dull browns and greys that comprise the rock, as well as the reddish hue on the non-rock shapes. The purples wiggle in accordance with the pressure from within, at the same time movement is experienced. The purples touch and there is a flood of new texture, much softer than the rock, warmer, more pliable and supple. It sends a frizz of sensation right down into the same place where the pressure from within lives. This is not rock. This is not light or darkness or pressure or anything else ever encountered. This is something that is experienced apart from outside stimulus; a sensation that feeds into itself, the feeling of touching and simultaneously the feeling of being touched. It reaches down into the core of what she is and forms into a new awareness.  _ She.  _

 

For the first time, she recognises herself as herself, as apart from her surroundings, as an individual. She is not the rock. She is not the darkness or the pressure or the smell. She isn’t anything else but herself. She almost doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge. If she is not a part of her surroundings, then what is she? Her hands knot into fists where she presses them together, curling and uncurling as she struggles with the unpleasant sensation rushing through her. She doesn’t understand it and she doesn’t like it, and so she pushes it away from herself, focuses on physical sensation instead of emotional experience. 

 

From the point where her hands touch she gently traces them up her harms, explores her own unknown shape. Her sturdy arms, the knobbly feeling of the joint where they join her torso. The curves of her body and the thick strength of her legs and feet. The pristine gemstone embedded in her chest. Her neck and chin and her mouth, her nose and her eyes. The tufts of hair on her head. She notices how they feel, how some parts of her are more sensitive than others - her gem and her cheeks tingle when she traces a finger over them, her lips even more so, and she learns the painful way that sticking a finger in your eye is a bad idea as it leads to pain and tears leaking out and blurred vision. 

 

It’s her first time experiencing pain and she takes a moment longer to get used to the unpleasant discovery that not everything in life feels nice. The sting in her eye subsides quickly, but it leaves her exhausted. There has been too much in too short amount of time. She needs time to get used to what she has learned. Turning around she sees a hole, the vestiges of its rocky substance still clinging to her form, and instinctively understands that it is hers. She crawls back into it and curls herself into a small ball until she has blotted out most of the light and returns to an almost-exact copy of her life before she emerged from the ground, when everything was simple and formless and the world was smaller. She pushes herself against the earth and takes comfort in the rough, pressing sensation against her skin. 

 

It soothes her, to experience nothing but the sensations she started with, and she almost doesn’t want to come out again. Why should she, when outside is so many unpleasant things, like the lack of pressure and bright light and stinging pain? But then, there is also the tickle of the air, the wideness of space, the weird shapes that weren’t rocks. Her mind holds the two desires at once and she has a hard time dealing with them. She wants to stay, but she wants to go back outside, too. Both places offer her something she wants, both lack something only the other has. There is no telling how long it takes her to come to a decision. 

 

Eventually though, she uncurls, blinks towards the entrance of her hole, and slowly makes her way outside. She can, after all, always come back. 

 

Crawling back into the light and the wind is fear and excitement, insecurity and curiosity. The first time out was so overwhelming that she almost wants to flinch back, but there is an instinct in her that pushes her forward. Flinching back is not an option. Careful and slow are not for her, the moments of weakness when she crawled back into her hole already bad enough. She straightens her body and takes confident steps forward, away from her hole. It’s no matter, she will be able to find it again. It will wait for her. 

 

Her steps carry her closer to one of the many oblong shapes that litter the place, clinging to both the ground and the cliffs high above her. The injectors are all inert and silent, their presence is nothing but a sad and eerie reminder of what came before. She doesn’t know this and simply closes in on them with curiosity alight in her eyes. They are different from the rock. She reaches out for one of its legs with her hand and runs her palm over the smooth surface. It’s entirely different from everything else she’s touched so far and that alone exhilarates her. The metal of the injector isn’t irregular like the rock, it rests cold and pristine against her fingertips. She brings her face to it and smells the faint, barely noticeable scent of the material, rubs her cheek on it to see if it will feel any different there than on her fingers. It does, just a little bit. 

 

Then she sees a movement in front of her and flinches back, staring wide eyed at the injector. Nothing moves. She inches forward and the movement is back. Her reflection in the injector blinks slowly back at her, cocks her head, wiggles her shoulders. She is ecstatic that she now knows what she looks like, but dejected it wasn’t anybody else. Still, she continues staring at her own distorted image until it gets harder and harder to do so. It’s difficult at first to tell why - her vision just seems to darken gradually, even though her eyes remain open. Is there something wrong with her? She rubs her eyes carefully, remembering the way she poked her finger into it and how it made everything go dark. Is this an after effect? 

 

But then she looks up, and the entire sky has changed. It’s no longer vaguely greyish white, but an inky, deep blue that almost verges into black. It reminds her of the first darkness, of back when she was in her hole. She stares at the sky until the first, fraying light of predawn reaches back into the horizon, and continues to watch until the light has returned back to what it was. She wonders briefly where the light went. 

 

The question reminds her she’s done enough standing around for now. To her left and right, the canyon stretches into the distance, waiting for her to explore it. 

 

The pieces of rock close to her hole are just as good a start as any other. She pulls herself up on one and sits down on it, watching her surroundings. The thick fog that never quite leaves the kindergarten makes it hard to see any further into the canyons. There is another, larger rock nearby and she wonders if she’ll be able to see more from there. This rock is taller than she is though, and she can’t easily pull herself up like she did with the first one. Her eyes trail over the edges jutting out. She grasps one experimentally in her hand, hooks her foot into a crack, and uses both to leverage herself upwards. Now she can reach another edge in the rock. Like this, she learns to climb. Reaching the top fills her right up. She feels big and she likes it. It doesn’t allow her to see any further though. 

 

Climbing down from the rock, she picks a direction entirely at random and follows it, watching the jagged cliffs with their many holes as she passes them by, the immobile injectors clinging to the rocky surface. The light leaves and returns while she wanders, and again, often enough that it loses all novelty and becomes simply another constant, the Way Things Are. She has a vague notion that this should allow her to comprehend how much time passes, but she isn’t able to make sense of it, doesn’t have the capacity to grasp the significance of numbers or the ability to put them into words. 

 

She can feel that she is losing something, that there’s some strange thing inside herself that she should have been capable of doing that’s slowly atrophying the longer she wanders and watches, but she doesn’t know what it might be. It makes her feel smaller. She hates that feeling, so she pushes it away, just like the unpleasant feeling when she first became aware of herself. 

 

By the time she has explored every single canyon of the kindergarten, she has forgotten about the atrophying thing and the smallness. The canyons all look largely the same, but as she doesn’t know anything else she takes note of all the small details, appreciates the subtle differences between them like a connoisseur: the steepness of the slopes, the number and position of the injectors and the holes - she cannot count them, but she can notice if there is more or less of something - the way some canyons are littered with rocks and some aren’t and the slightly different hues of the rock itself. 

 

When she reaches the border of the kindergarten she stops. She can see things that are entirely different from everything in the kindergarten, far way into the distance - there are colours she’s never seen before, objects that have entirely different shapes than the rocks or the injectors or the holes. But as much as she wants to reach out to them, to walk up to them and explore them, she can’t.

 

In some deep part of herself, one of her base instincts tells her that she has to stay. She’s waiting for something, even if she’s not sure for what. Her face tightens into a frown as she stares longingly into the distance, the tantalizing hints of something more just beyond her reach. She wants to go. She wants to go so badly but her own mind won’t let her. It’s the most frustrating thing in her entire life. Something builds inside of her, similar to the non-pressure that first translated into movement. She’s learned to trust it and so she lets it out as a loud, tight scream that echoes strangely through the empty canyons of the kindergarten. It shocks her, she hadn’t known she could make sounds, let alone such loud ones. 

 

She turns back abruptly and marches back into the maze of the canyons. If she can’t leave, then the outside doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care about it, it’s unimportant and stupid and not worth bothering about. It’s something to be shoved away, like feeling smaller. The scream made her feel better anyway.

 

The canyons pass her by as she marches back. She takes the time to climb up one of the cliff sides for a bit, when she’s back in the canyon where her hole is. It doesn’t matter that she’s only climbed once before, her body is strong and it’s easy for her to find all the good nooks and crannies and ridges to put her hands and feet on so she can pull herself up. She enjoys the exercise, the physicality of it. The holes she passes by barely interest her and she takes only a minimum amount of effort peeking into one or the other. She didn’t really expect anyone to be in there, or they would have heard her and came out already. What’s interesting to her is the new vantage point. From up here the kindergarten looks different. She feels bigger again, so she stays for a while, sits down in one of the holes and lets her legs dangle over the edge. 

 

Looking down, she can see a flat, round shape that looks different than the other things in the kindergarten. She climbs down to have a look at it. It’s not actually completely flat and rises from the ground just a little bit, just high enough that she needs to lift her foot higher than when she walks to step on it. There are regular, angular shapes on its side and the top surface is completely flat and smooth. She lowers herself onto her knees and runs her palms over it, then presses her cheek against the material. It feels almost like the metal of the injectors, and it’s just as cold. She lays down on it for a little bit, but it’s ultimately not as comfortable as the rock, so she gets up again after a while. It’s different, but it doesn’t do anything, and there’s not much she can think of doing with it either. 

 

Darkness descends once more and she looks up. She can almost see something else past the thick darkness of the sky, as if there are lights behind the blackness that hide from her. She wonders if this is where the daylight goes when it gets dark like this, and decides it must be. Only when the light has returned does she climb down again and crosses the canyon back to her hole. It sits there waiting for her as she expected it to. Crawling into it it embraces her with its soothing, well-known smell, the press of rock against her body. She doesn’t stay long this time though, she’s just checking in. 

 

She returns to the rock she first sat on and hangs out on it for a little while, watching the injectors and the fog, then the clouds overhead. There’s a sort of movement in them and she tries to pick out shapes in the mass, imagines the shape of her hole here and the outline of an injector there. One looks like the climbing rock across of her and that fills her with the strange, building pressure inside of her. This time when she releases it, it comes out as a hollering laugh. It echoes through the kindergarten just like her scream did, but it sounds much nicer. 

 

This is fun. She wiggles on the rock, gets into a more comfortable position, and laughs again. Then she tests out another scream, just to listen to the difference in the two sounds she’s found she can make. She tries out other noises and is surprised by the variety she’s able to produce; grunts and huffs and snorts, a variety of sounds depending on how she opens her mouth. She can click her tongue against her teeth or stick it between her lips to produce a funny fluttering sound. Her lips can smack together or release air with a soft plop. 

 

The sounds occupy her for many light and dark periods, so many that she can’t bear to sit still the entire time she’s testing them out. She turns and twists on her seat, gets up, climbs the climbing rock, jumps down from it and hollers out another wild laughter at how marvellous that feels, the brief moment of being suspended in the air, as if she’s left some part of her core body behind before it catches back up with her. 

 

It feels as if she should be able to do something with the sounds, as if she should be using them for something, but she can’t figure out what. Thinking about this just throws the feeling of something lacking, of something inside her atrophying back into sharp relief, so she quickly pushes the thought away from her, as she has learned to do. The sounds are fun. She doesn’t want to ruin them. 

 

She continues to produce them out of habit even after she’s tired of their novelty, a long while later. When she climbs the climbing rock, she giggles, when she jumps down from it, she hollers a laugh. When she grasps the metal legs of the injector and swings back and forth she shrieks. When she walks back to her hole to seek its comfort, she hums. The sounds come automatically now that she’s discovered them, and they fill the silence somewhat. 

 

Only when she stops making them entirely does she notice that the absence brings the silence into sharper focus. It feels as if it’s pressing against her ears. She lets out another loud yell and listens to its echoes. It would be nice if she weren’t the only one making the echoes. Suddenly she feels strangely hollow. Time to find a distraction, then.

 

The climbing rock doesn’t make the feeling go away. Jumping from it doesn’t make her laugh. 

 

She returns to the sitting rock and tries popping and smacking her lips again, then humming. But with each noise she makes the silence seems to get heavier, and the hollow feeling worse. It pulls at her chest in strange ways that she doesn’t understand and makes her skin ache. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s a sensation of something lacking. She wants to feel something on her skin, maybe. 

 

The rock has been smoothed by the many times she sat on it. Now she embraces it and presses her cheek against the flat surfaces. It’s the softest thing she knows, apart from herself. 

 

It doesn’t help. She screams in frustration and jumps back from the rock. There’s another one nearby, one she hasn’t paid much attention to up until now - it’s too jagged to sit on and too small to climb. Now she raises her leg and brings her foot down on the rock with all the strength she can muster. 

 

The impact is a sharp explosion of sound as the rock splits into two. Dust raises from where it falls and scratches her throat. She coughs, but the new noise doesn’t make her happy. She doesn’t feel any better at all. 

 

She returns to her hole and closes her eyes and shrinks back the universe to nothing but darkness and smell and the not-quite-familiar pressure of forcing her own shape against the rock. This is her last resort, the only thing she has left to calm herself, to make the bad feelings go away. Everything here is achingly familiar. She’s explored every inch of the kindergarten, played in its vast, empty expanse and poked her nose into every nook and cranny of it, but nothing out there will ever be as familiar as this, as comforting. It will help. It must. 

 

Her breathing slows as she allows time to slip by, focusing only on the comfort of the first thing she knew in life. 

 

She sees things after a while, despite the fact that her eyes are closed, indistinct like things in the distance appear through the fog. She sees the canyons and rocks she has visited during the time outside, the oddly shaped clouds she’s noticed, or the glint of an injector. She drifts in and out of these visions and doesn’t question them as they disappear and reappear in her mind with no input from herself. Sometimes, she won’t see much besides vague and hazy shapes, but feel the wind ghosting against her skin and howling in her ears. 

 

Sometimes in this not-vision, there is a strange feeling of touch, of comfort and peace and pleasure, one that she has no actual memory of ever experiencing, that still leaves her with an unfocused yearning for something she can’t quite place. It makes her curl her own arms around herself, rub her hands up and down to feel the slide of skin against skin, a double sensation received from two parts of her body that pleases her but never quite manages to make the yearning go away. It combines with the hollow she experienced in the silence and the two feelings lodge themselves in her chest like the jagged rock she’s kicked into two, as if it’s nestled in her gemstone and expands to tear her apart. 

 

She runs her hands over the facets and feels their smooth surfaces. There is not a single crack there, no chip, nothing. There is nothing physically wrong with her. Her hole, her last resort, isn’t helping her. 

 

Something constricts in her throat and makes it hard to breathe. There’s a muffled, weak sound escaping her as she gasps for breath. Her eyes and cheeks feel wet from her tears. She runs her fingers over her cheeks and eyes, carefully so she won’t hurt herself.

 

It doesn’t make any sense. Her eyes do not hurt, like when she poked a finger into one. Why are they leaking? She doesn’t understand her own body anymore. Her eyes are wet, she can’t breathe, and her chest feels hollow and jagged at once. The little gasps transform into a wail.

 

She cries in her hole, sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly, for almost as long as she’s been in the hole the first time around, and it never makes the hollow, tearing feeling in her chest go away. 

 

Afterwards she just lays there, motionless and soundless, completely defeated. Her mind is numb and she loses herself for a while, almost returns to the state of non-awareness. It would have been a relief, not being aware of herself, no longer feeling. But every time time she comes close something inside of her pulls her back into herself. 

 

She does get up again, after a while. Climbs out of the hole and stares at her surroundings. It’s nothing new, she knows all of this already by this point. She wanders, walks the entire length and breadth of the kindergarten, again and again and again, climbs up all the slopes, wedges herself into every hole she finds, runs her hands over every piece of rock and every injector. She jumps from ledges. Sometimes she jumps from one so high that she feeling of weightlessness lasts for many seconds before her feet slam into the ground, so long that jumping comes dangerously close to falling. Sometimes she turns in the air and crashes her entire body into the ground with all the force of gravity. It hurts, but she doesn’t care. She’s hurting anyway, and the higher jumps can still make her laugh once a while. Laughing feels better than crying, even if she’s forcing herself to do it. 

 

She begins making noises again, then laughs at how painful the absence of sound becomes after she finishes. She laughs at the hollow feeling in her chest, at how pressing her hands against her arms the only thing that comes close to soothing the brutal yearning that constantly pulls at her, at how no amount of pressing herself against her palms or against rock can ever make it truly better. 

 

It’s while she’s in the middle of slamming herself against her climbing rock, because that leaves a painful prickle on her skin that doesn’t just go away like when she rubs her palms over her arms, that the world changes, so suddenly and unexpectedly that she stumbles backwards in shock and falls flat on her butt. 

 

On one of the cliffs, where she found the round, flat thing, there is an explosion of light. It’s accompanied by a sharp, ringing sound she’s never heard before, one she’s pretty sure she couldn’t make herself. When the light subsides, there’s something there. 

 

Not something. Someone. 

 

She feels her eyes widen. For the first time in her life, she sees creatures that aren’t just her own image mirrored in the cold metal of the injectors. They look very different from her. They have different colours and are much taller. 

 

The moment seems to stretch as they take each other in, their eyes just as wide as hers must be, their mouths hanging open just like hers is. Then the moment shatters as they lunge forwards. She jerks back at the sudden movement and runs back to her hole, diving into it just as the hands of the others try to grasp her. The hole isn’t big enough for all of them, but that doesn’t stop them for long. The thinner one reaches in and points a long thing with an edge at her. 

 

There are sounds coming out of the mouth of this person, but they confuse her. They’re different from the sounds she makes, they roll into each other and jump up and down. All the clicks and hums and trills combine into one long thing. It’s fascinating and she stares at the face of the stranger. She can’t even begin to imitate that. The stranger jerks her pointy thing. She’s not sure what the stranger wants from her, so she reaches her hand out to grasp it. 

 

Pain floods through her palm at the contact and she winces back with a cry, holding her palm against her chest. A sharp bark from the outside makes the thin stranger retreat, only to be replaced by a different one. This one doesn’t come into her hole though. She watches the stranger's face as she warily cradles her throbbing hand. This one looks nicer than the first one, the round facial structure and poofy hair much closer to herself. The stranger makes some very gentle sounds. They rattle her. She can feel how the sounds reach deep into her mind and awaken things that had long since atrophied in her lonely years. Much more importantly, they make the hollow, jagged yearning better. It’s not gone, but it’s better. 

 

That’s enough for her. 

 

She climbs unsteadily to her feet and crawls out of her hole. It doesn’t matter if they hurt her. She’s hurt herself before just to make the yearning better, and it was never as good as this. If the pain has to be sharper so the hollow yearning can finally go away, so be it. She stands at the entrance to her hole, uncomfortably aware of how much smaller she is than the strangers. 

 

The stranger that coaxed her out of her hole, the one with the nice face, is making sounds at her. She can’t follow it. The stranger repeats it, much more slowly. It frustrates her that she can’t make sense of it, she knows somehow that she should be able to. 

 

“Ah, ah,” she makes. 

 

The stranger repeats it again, over and over until she does an approximation that’s close enough. 

 

“Amethyst.”

 

The stranger smiles and bobs her head, then points at her. The name settles into the core of her being. Amethyst has a feeling that this is how it should have been, that this is something that should have happened a long, long time ago. She can’t begin to imagine why it didn’t or what it means that it didn’t. Amethyst hadn’t known that she had a name. She hadn’t know that things had names, that you could point at something and designate it a set of sounds to call it by. She wants to know all the names of all the things. She feels she should be knowing them already. 

 

There’s a sting in the corner of her eyes, tears threatening to spill over from the sheer overwhelming revelations that are fired at her, but she holds them back, barely. She doesn’t want them to see her cry. 

 

The nice looking stranger hold out her hand. Amethyst goes still for just the fraction of a second before she carefully reaches out and slides her own hand into the strangers palm. The sensation is soft and fizzles against her skin, but at the core of her being, it feels like a slap, harder than when she slammed her body into the ground, sharper than the rock she used to hurt herself, more painful than the pointy thing of the thin stranger. The nice stranger doesn’t seem to notice or care, and pulls Amethyst close, presses their bodies together and settles her long, strong arms around Amethyst’s frame. It not only fills the hollow, jagged yearning in her chest but saturates it, stuffs it until it flows over. 

 

Amethyst does cry, after all. But only a little bit, into the voluminous hair of the first person to touch her, and Rose Quartz is kind enough to hold her there and never tells anyone else, later. 

 


End file.
